


Tiny Little Flashlights

by commoncomitatus



Series: This Delicate Thing [2]
Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Beds, Curtain Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26479708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Post-S1/Early S2. Pigsy attempts to make everyone's life a little more comfortable. His companions are not the founts of gratitude he was hoping for.
Series: This Delicate Thing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925029
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not saying I've dedicated hours of my life to wondering where, when, how, and why our heroes acquired bedrolls for S2 after spending all of S1 sleeping on the ground.
> 
> And I am definitely not saying I have dedicated hours of my life to extensively studying the two blink-and-you-miss-it scenes in which we actually got to see said bedrolls.
> 
> What I am saying is... this is a fic that exists.

***

Funny thing about saving the world: it doesn’t pay.

Not in any of the ways that matter, at least. The eternal gratitude of a few dozen backwater towns and villages is all well and good in theory, but it doesn’t exactly foot the bill for a new shirt or a pair of waterproof socks.

Not to mention certain other expenses.

Massages, for example. A bloody necessity, what with the physical exertions of their day-to-day lives, but not easy to come by and definitely not cheap. It’s hard enough, Pigsy has discovered, to find a pair of hands talented to do a half-decent job on a god in the first place, without having to factor in budgetary constraints on top.

Fortunately for their coin purses — if not quite so fortunate for his poor back — the others put a stop to that expenditure pretty sharpish.

Tripitaka, all business and frugality even after the whole ‘not actually a real monk’ thing came out, says, “I don’t know if that’s the most efficient use of our resources.”

“Easy for you to say,” Pigsy grumbles, stretching out his miserable, aching muscles. “You try hauling our stuff around all day and sleeping on rocks all night.”

Monkey rolls his eyes. “He’s just being a big baby,” he says to Tripitaka. “Gods don’t get back pain.”

“We don’t?” Sandy pipes up, looking somewhere between confused and distraught. “Because, um...”

Tripitaka glares at Monkey. “Can we please go five minutes without giving her an existential crisis?”

“Better yet,” Pigsy says, blocking off that particular avenue before they can spend the rest of the day there, “how about we get back to me?”

“All right.” She levels him with one of her most Scholar-y looks. Scary enough when she was a boy and a monk, those looks; now that she’s herself for real, and thus more comfortable in her own skin, they’re demon-level terrifying. “No more massages, Pigsy. If carrying our stuff is causing you trouble, find a more elegant — and cost-efficient — solution.”

“Oh, I can think of a _very_ elegant solution,” Pigsy mutters, with a pointed look at Monkey. “What say you, oh ‘great sage, equal of Heaven’? Fancy living up to your name for once?”

Monkey, whistling an infuriatingly jaunty tune, pretends not to hear.

*

Fair enough, in truth. It’s not really the carrying that’s the problem.

Oh, it’s not his favourite part of the quest, to be sure, though that’s no secret; who’d take a life as a pack-mule by choice? It’s exhausting, and nine times out of ten it’s bloody thankless.

But at the end of the day, he knows it could be a hell of a lot worse.

As cumbersome as their pack can get sometimes, they’re not exactly overburdened with luggage. Even taking into account the handful of trinkets he couldn’t bear to leave behind from his comfortable old life — a moment of weakness he probably should have thought through a little better — it’s not like they’re weighed down by bags of gold and silver.

Oh, if only they were.

Instead they have Tripitaka, who travels as light as one would expect of a monk, false or otherwise, and Sandy, who has only what she carries about her person.

Monkey is a slightly bigger problem, insisting on three identical variants of the same tunic and at least half a dozen separate hair-care products, and why that doesn’t count as an ‘inefficient use of their resources’ too, Pigsy has no bloody clue. Still, vanity issues aside, even Monkey is no major resource-hog, what with the whole ‘five centuries of exile and imprisonment’ bit stripping him of most of his worldly possessions.

It’s more or less just the basics, really. Food and water, cooking utensils, the occasional sentimental knick-knack, and—

And maybe that is the problem after all, because that’s pretty much the lot.

The best part of a year they’ve been journeying together on this blasted quest, and they don’t even have a blanket to their name.

Small wonder, then, that he wakes some mornings feeling like he’s lost a fight with a dragon.

And maybe that sort of thing is all fine and dandy for the likes of Tripitaka, raised as she was by the Scholar and other such ‘find joy and purpose in sparse living’ monastery types. And maybe it’s business as usual for Sandy, too, who has likely spent her life sleeping on rather less comfortable things than rocks. But Pigsy didn’t give up a free ride to the penthouse to spend his nights rolling around on the cold wet ground and waking in the morning to misery and muscle spasms.

So, then: the next time they take a much-needed break in some out-of-the-way little town, he makes a plan.

And then, after Monkey blows the last of their coin on yet another fancy-pants hair product, he gets a job.

The ‘great sage equal of Heaven’, as he’s taken to calling himself, might be above getting his hands dirty with manual labour, but the pack-mule pig god is not.

Three days he spends doing favours and odd-jobs for the locals, working his fingers down to the bone while Monkey ‘entertains’ the patrons of the tavern, while Tripitaka hunkers down in the libraries and monasteries with her scrolls and her books and her studies, while Sandy slinks away to whatever shadowy little corners she usually hides in when there are too many people around.

Three days he works himself near to exhaustion. Three days, but he has to admit it feels pretty damn good, getting what he wants for once through hard work and honesty. Better than he’d ever admit to his old self, to be sure.

It’s good work, and good coin too, and by the time Tripitaka gathers them all together and announces that they should get back to the quest he’s amassed more than enough savings to make a few good purchases.

A few — he hopes — _very_ good purchases.

**


	2. Chapter 2

**

“What,” Monkey demands, wrinkling his nose, “is _that_?”

Pigsy, having anticipated precisely this reaction, just rolls his eyes. “What does it look like, genius?”

Arms folded, smirking, Monkey deadpans, “An eyesore.”

“Wrong.”

But no less unexpected; Pigsy takes it in stride, namely by glaring.

Monkey, of course, only smirks more. “Go on, then. Enlighten me.”

Allowing himself only the briefest fantasy of clobbering him over the head, Pigsy directs his attention to the bundle at their feet, pointing at it with all the grandeur and importance it deserves.

“Bedroll,” he announces. “Pillow. Blankets. You’re welcome.”

Monkey, as predictable in this as in everything else thus far, remains wholly unimpressed.

“It’s green,” he observes flatly.

Pigsy sighs. “It’s _turquoise_.” Then, more thoughtfully, “Maybe just a splash of teal...”

“It’s _green_ , Pigsy.”

“It brings out your _eyes_ , Monkey.”

Monkey — notoriously, smoulderingly dark-eyed Monkey, without so much as a speck of turquoise anywhere on him — is understandably rather cynical.

And very indignant.

“Are you colour-blind or something?” he sputters, throwing up his hands. “I can’t be seen wearing that!”

Pigsy closes his eyes and counts to ten. Then he opens his eyes and counts to ten three more times.

“It’s a bedroll,” he explains again, patience waning. “For sleeping in. It’s not a bloody fashion statement.”

Monkey heaves a massive, melodramatic sigh, shaking his head like Pigsy’s mere existence is a disappointment of the most epic proportions.

“Pigsy, Pigsy, Pigsy.” Another sigh, if possible even more obnoxious. “ _Everything_ is a fashion statement. Have you really learned nothing in all our months of travelling together?”

Apparently not, since he genuinely believed an act of selfless generosity would go over well.

“Right,” he huffs, getting annoyed now. “So you’d rather be fashionable than comfortable?”

Monkey gawks at him, like that’s such an obvious, stupid question it doesn’t even warrant an answer.

Not that it’ll stop him from giving one, Pigsy suspects, going by the way he’s readying his big mouth.

“Look, Pigsy. Just because you’re a whiny, soft-bellied baby—”

“Bit rude,” Pigsy grumbles, “given that I’m trying to do you a favour and all. But sure, go right ahead.”

“—doesn’t mean the rest of us are.” He jabs a finger at the bundle, screwing up his face like he can’t believe he has to look at the thing. “We’re _gods_. Am I the only one who remembers this? We don’t need blankets or pillows.”

“Don’t need leather boots either,” Pigsy shoots back sourly. “Still a good idea to have a decent pair, though, when you’re walking on sharp rocks or hot sand or wet mud for nine hours a day.”

Monkey harrumphs. “That’s different. Leather boots look good on me.”

Under his breath Pigsy mutters, “Bet a black eye would look good too.”

Making an impressive show of not hearing that, Monkey presses on.

“I’m serious. I don’t know why all the gods in this new world are so _weak_. You’d think five hundred years under the boots of demons would’ve toughened you all up or something. But you’re all even softer than you were before. Way worse than those lazy good-for-nothing idiots up on Jade Mountain, who couldn’t even...”

And he stops.

Pigsy thinks about that, taking it all in: what he didn’t say and what that says. The look on his face, suddenly serious. The darkening clouds behind his already-dark eyes. The way he’s no longer looking at anything, just sort of staring blankly into the middle distance.

He thinks that maybe there’s more to all this bravado than the so-called ‘great sage’ wants his soft-bellied companion to know about.

“Hm,” Pigsy says.

Monkey glowers. “I don’t need your stupid pillows,” he snaps, cutting him off before he can press further. “And I definitely don’t need your stupid tealquoise-coloured bedroll thing.”

Pigsy could call him on that, quite easily. Could cheerfully remind him of the dozen or more freezing winter nights he spent complaining about the wind or the frost coating the ground.

Could remind him of a fair few other ‘soft’ moments too, if he had a mind to it.

Contrary to Monkey’s opinion, he _has_ learned some things in the time they’ve been travelling together. Not least of all, he’s learned that even the Monkey King — the ‘great sage equal of self-denial’ — has his limits.

 _You’re a fine one to talk about being soft,_ he thinks, with just a hint of spite.

He’s gracious enough not to say it out loud, though. Keeps it to himself, along with all the other secrets the others think he’s too big and dumb or too oblivious to have seen.

Puts him one above Monkey, he thinks, having a bit of bloody civility about him.

So, instead of the dozen not-so-civil things he’s thinking, he just shrugs, picks up the bedroll, and says, “Suit yourself. But don’t come crying to me when the late-night cold sets in and you’re shivering in your underthings.”

Monkey snorts.

“Trust me,” he says, with his usual maddening certainty, “that will _never_ happen.”

*

To no-one’s surprise, it does happen.

Not that night — Monkey’s stubbornness and pride last that long, at least — but the next. They’re midway up a mountain by that point, and the bitter chill of the last few nights has devolved into ‘even gods start worrying for their extremities’ territory.

Pigsy, bundled up nice and warm in his own lovely new bedroll, has nothing to worry about.

The ‘great sage’, on the other hand...

Well. Suffice it to say, Pigsy is not surprised in the least when he’s woken in the dead of night by an — admittedly good-looking — leather boot saying hello to his face.

“Pigsy! Hey, Pigsy!”

Pigsy rolls over, swatting the boot away, then yanks the pillow up over his head. Chalk up another point in favour of the bedrolls, he thinks with spiteful satisfaction.

“Pigsy’s not home right now.”

Monkey doesn’t try to kick him again, but he does let out an undignified whine. “Knock it off, will you?”

Hidden as his face is by the twin barriers of blanket and pillow, Pigsy doesn’t even try to mask his smirk.

“Sorry,” he says cheerfully, “I’m afraid I can’t hear you through all these warm, comfy layers of blanket.”

This time when Monkey kicks him, a not-at-all-gentle heel to the ribs, he has to admit it’s well-earned.

“Where is it?” Monkey demands.

Pigsy sighs, recognising a lost cause when he sees one, and clambers sullenly out from the warmth and coziness of his bedroll.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he says, squinting up at Monkey through the cloudy moonlit night.

Monkey crosses his arms. Even in the dark, Pigsy can make out the goosebumps prickling his skin.

“You know what I’m talking about.” He stoops to make eye-contact, glaring hard enough that a lesser — or at least a less antagonistic — god would surely be quaking in his pyjamas. “That stupid tealquoise bedroll thing of yours. Where is it?”

Pigsy makes a show of yawning in his face.

“Sorry,” he says, shrugging groggily. “You said you weren’t interested, so I sold it to that tradesman we passed ten leagues back.”

Monkey’s eyes go wide. Then they narrow.

“Liar,” he says, leaning back just enough for Pigsy to make out every line on his face, every twitch of his mouth, every gleam of threat behind his eyes. “You’d never give away something you could use to make yourself more comfortable.”

“I would for the right amount of coin,” Pigsy shoots back with another, exaggeratedly careless yawn. “Do you have any idea how many massages I can get for the price of a mint-condition, unused turquoise bedroll?”

With slow, calculated calm, Monkey draws his shrunken staff out of his hair. With slow, _calculated_ calm, he extends it to its full length and twirls it in the space between them.

“Not nearly as many as you’re going to need,” he says through gritted teeth, “by the time I’m done with you.”

Pigsy watches him for a long, drawn-out beat. He watches the arc of his staff, each flourish a study of poetry in motion even when used for such nefarious ends as these. He watches his face too, studies the gleam in his eyes, the curl of his lip, the drag of his tongue across his teeth. He watches his body, his shoulders, his arms, taking in the wordless warning, danger rippling through him.

Every inch of him is a threat, a promise of violence if he doesn’t get what he wants. Like he really thinks he could change the past — if there were any real truth to it — by beating the ever-loving snot out of the present.

Fortunately for them both, it’s not a disappointment he’ll actually have to face. He has the measure of Pigsy’s self-absorption well enough, and Pigsy is too tired to antagonise him by pretending that’s not the case.

Most days, he would — there’s nothing he loves nothing better than pulling at Monkey’s temper until it snaps — but it’s the middle of the night, halfway up a mountain, and he needs his sleep.

So — only a little grudgingly — he reaches out, grabs the staff mid-twirl, and sighs. “All right, all right. That’s enough posturing for one night.”

Monkey steps back, his anger replaced now with his trademark smug triumph. “I knew it! Where are you hiding it, you sneaky bedroll-thief?”

Pigsy could point out that it’s hardly theft when he’s the one who bought the bloody thing in the first place, but he suspects that particular nuance would be wasted on Monkey’s unique intellect.

“Where do you think, genius?” he asks instead, rolling his eyes.

He doesn’t bother waiting for the ‘great sage equal of brainless’ to puzzle that one out; they’d both freeze to death if he did. Instead, muttering under his breath about stubborn, prideful mutton-heads, he stalks over to their pack — neatly bundled up and stowed away ready to begin tomorrow’s trek — and promptly sets to work unravelling the whole thing.

“Tripitaka’s going to kill us both in the morning,” he grouses as he works. “Just so you’re aware.”

Monkey, hopping impatiently from one foot to the other, only laughs. “Kill _you_ , big guy, not me. I’m not the one who buried the important stuff at the bottom, now, am I?”

“No.” Pigsy sighs, feeling his patience faltering again. “Just the one who was too arrogant to admit that he might actually need it one of these days.”

That wipes the smirk off his face. He’s back to his charming thundercloud self when Pigsy straightens up again, bedroll in hand, and when he speaks it’s in a voice as chilly as the night air.

“It’s not arrogance to know what you’re capable of,” he mutters, snatching the thing out of Pigsy’s hands without so much as a ‘thank you’. “Maybe if you tested your limits once in a while, you wouldn’t be such a lightweight.” He shakes out the roll, laying down the blankets unsettlingly close to Pigsy’s own, and goes on, “Maybe if everyone in this stupid crybaby world tested their limits once in a while, it wouldn’t all fall on me to save them all from themselves.”

Pigsy lets out a low whistle. “That’s a hell of an ego,” he remarks, shuffling his own blankets a judicious distance away. “Even by your admittedly impressive standards.”

“Just telling it like it is,” Monkey grunts, folding and unfolding the turquoise blanket with a strange, fidgety nervousness. “Everyone here is so soft and stupid and useless.”

“Says the god who woke me up in the middle of the night for a blanket because his poor little toesies got cold.”

Monkey doesn’t dignify that with a response. He plonks himself down onto the pile of blankets, flops back until his head hits the pillow, and stretches out with a loud, obnoxious yawn.

“Enough talking,” he says, glaring up at Pigsy. “The Monkey King needs his sleep.”

And he yanks the turquoise blanket up over his head and immediately starts snoring.

*

In the morning, he throws the rumpled blankets and pillow at Pigsy’s barely-awake head, and says, thick with sleep and self-importance, “I suppose it has its uses.”

Pigsy grunts, rather more at the impact than the words. “Glad to be of service,” he replies acidly. “You know, you could pack away your own stuff once in a while.”

“Oh, I’d never deprive you of the chance to feel useful.”

And off he struts to the nearest body of water, to begin the arduous hours-long process of making his hair ‘presentable’.

Read: ‘needlessly perfect’.

He’s insufferably cheerful for the rest of the morning, no doubt the direct product of a decent night’s sleep under a good, warm blanket. Pigsy refrains, as best he can, from being too smug about that but... well, it’s Monkey, and that makes it difficult.

Not least of all because the ‘great sage’ is always so quick to take the credit for absolutely everything.

“You know,” he crows, midway through the morning, “it’s important to understand your body’s needs.” He’s not really looking at anyone, save perhaps his own reflection, but Pigsy still feels the words like they’re aimed straight at him. “As the finest known specimen of god physiognomy, I know better than most how important it is to—”

“—to not be ‘a whiny soft-bellied baby’?”

Okay, so he can’t help himself. A god’s patience only goes so far, and Monkey already pushed his past its limits by waking him up in the middle of the bloody night.

Monkey glares at him. “If you think about it,” he points out, drawing himself up with his usual self-importance, “we all perform better when we’re comfortable.”

Pigsy snorts. “You know, that _does_ ring a bell. Where could I possibly have heard it before?” He glares right back, not missing a beat. “Oh, that’s right: from me.”

Tripitaka, always the one to try and keep the peace, sighs and steps between them.

“He’s actually in a good mood for once,” she says to Pigsy. “Let’s not ruin it.”

Pigsy grumbles his annoyance. “Right. Wouldn’t want to do that, now, would we?”

Still, if only for the little human’s sake, he backs down and holds his tongue.

Naturally, this only makes Monkey even more insufferable. He puffs out his chest, gloats for approximately ten solid minutes, then strides off ahead of everyone, full of well-rested energy and Monkey-flavoured arrogance. 

Tripitaka claps an apologetic hand on Pigsy’s shoulder, then shrugs and scurries off to catch up.

Loitering quietly beside him, Sandy says, “If it helps, I don’t perform better when I’m comfortable at all.”

“Of course you don’t.” Pigsy pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, great big help, that. Thanks.”

He’s lying. Obviously, or so he thought.

But Sandy, being apparently immune to irony, lights up like she believes every damn word. She beams up at him, bright as the morning sun, and the real, genuine joy with which she chirrups “You’re welcome!” kind of maybe does help a bit.

So, hey. At least there’s that.

*

Monkey is no less annoying that night.

The very instant Pigsy has shrugged their pack off his sore, tired shoulders, Monkey plants himself next to it and refuses to move until the bedroll is out and in his hand.

“Just in case you’re getting any more ideas about selling it,” he says, shaking it out with a big, smug grin.

Pigsy watches him fuss over the blankets that he was so quick to deride not so long ago, chewing irritably on the inside of his cheek.

It shouldn’t surprise him by now, he supposes. They’ve been travelling together long enough, they all know Monkey’s obsession with his own appearance, his constant need to be the best and the toughest, always making himself out to be the only one worth anything at all, twisting everyone else into something smaller, making even his fellow gods out to be something weak and soft by comparison.

It definitely shouldn’t surprise him that he has become the favourite punching bag for these little moments of overblown ego; isn’t that the story of his whole life? Do a good deed, and this is what he gets, every single time.

Not to mention that he still hasn’t gotten a ‘thank you’.

He knows better than to expect one of those any time soon, but he’ll be damned if he’ll let Monkey walk all over him again without calling him on it.

He waits until they’re alone, the others already drowsing on the other side of the fire, and then he says, “So let me see if I’ve got this straight...”

Monkey makes a show of stretching out all of his limbs. “What’s the problem now?”

“Just to double-check,” Pigsy says, not rising to the bait. “When I want a blanket, it’s ‘soft’ and ‘weak’ and all the rest of it, but when _you_ want one, suddenly it’s ‘important’ and ‘good for everyone’?”

“Sounds about right, yeah.” Another stretch, this one coupled with a yawn. “So what?”

Pigsy grinds his teeth together. “So you don’t see any kind of hypocrisy in any of that?”

Monkey peers at him for a beat or two, then shrugs. “I don’t make the rules, Pigsy. The great sage equal of Heaven needs what he needs, you know? And what’s good for me is good for the world.” He stretches, then rearranges the blanket a little, fussing over a loose thread. “So yeah: important, and good for everyone. Just like me.”

There’s a lot that Pigsy could say to that.

A lot he really wants to say, quite frankly.

But...

 _But_.

He takes a couple of minutes to steady himself, cool his temper and his patience, make himself ready for the inevitably maddening task of trying to have a rational, mature conversation with Monkey. Steels himself, meditates and seeks out inner peace, like Tripitaka used to do when she was pretending to be a real monk. It’s a bit of a shame, really, that she didn’t keep up that particular practice after her secret came out; there are few things more useful on a long and exhausting quest than inner peace, and doubly so with a travelling companion as patience-pushing as Monkey.

Not that Pigsy has much room to talk, really. His own efforts at seeking inner peace, meagre though they are, stutter out every time Monkey so much as glances his way.

They stutter out now, too, fading to nothing before he’s even gotten his breathing in order. No sense in putting it off, he supposes, and so he steadies himself and leaps in.

“You know,” he says, just a touch too casual to be convincing, "it _is_ possible to big up your own ego without dragging down everyone else within a hundred-league radius. You are aware of that, right?”

Monkey stares at him, expression flickering between idle puzzlement and what seems like genuine frustration.

Pigsy doesn’t really know what to expect out of that. It’s especially difficult to tell what Monkey’s thinking in moments like this; he can be defensive and belligerent in one minute, playful and flirty in the next, with seemingly nothing to separate them but the direction of the wind. There’s no logic to his moods, even when things seem like they should be straightforward, and no way to tell which is more likely to rear its head.

Pigsy expects the former this time — the furrowed brow usually lends itself to one of his hyper-defensive temper tantrums — but what he gets instead is a weird sort of in-between thing that is neither broody nor particularly cheerful.

After a long, somewhat stressful silence, Monkey finally comes out with, “You don’t get it, do you?”

It’s not an accusation; it’s actually a sincere question for once. That alone makes Pigsy nervous.

“Beg pardon?” He studies him carefully, finds the same sobriety mirrored on his face. “What’s that?”

Monkey is quiet for a beat. Head down, brows knitted together; on anyone else, Pigsy might have assumed he was deep in thought, but in all his many, many years he’s never met anyone less inclined to deep thinking than Monkey. More likely he’s just trying to figure out whether he’s hungry or gassy.

Pigsy could probably help him with the latter problem, if he cared to voice it.

Unfortunately what actually comes out of his mouth is a rather thornier issue.

“Look,” he says, shaking off that uncharacteristic deep-thought expression and returning to his usual cranky self. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Pigsy, but I’m kind of famous.”

Pigsy quirks a brow. “Really? Never would’ve guessed.”

“Right,” Monkey says, apparently not hearing the sarcasm. “Half the world blames me for everything that’s happened in the last five hundred years—” He waves a hand, simultaneously demonstrative and a little bit dismissive. “—and the other half expects me to fix it all single-handed.”

Pigsy pulls his own blanket a little tighter around his shoulders. If they’re going to make a deep and meaningful discussion out of this, he wants to be warm.

“I was aware of that, yeah,” he says, since the deadpan approach clearly isn’t working. “I mean, you talk about it all the bloody time, so...”

“Well, it’s important. You know, just like me.” He flexes, then deflates, like maybe it’s not as easy to talk about this stuff as he wants Pigsy to believe it is. “Point is, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

Pigsy knows this too, of course. Still...

“You expect me to believe the only way you can achieve that is by calling the rest of us ‘soft’?”

“Until I get the rest of my powers back, yeah.”

And that—

Well.

That says a lot more than just the words.

Monkey knows it too: even before the words are fully formed, he’s clapping a hand over his mouth, turning pale and turning his face away, turning into a dozen different things that he almost never lets the others see. It happens so rarely, these moments of acknowledged weakness, that Pigsy recognises it even in the midnight dark: the flash of horror, the deeper humiliation, the self-directed rage.

He knows most of those things better than he’d care to.

It’s a rare thing indeed, to see them in Monkey as well.

Rarer still, to look at him, hiding his face in shame, gritting his teeth, biting down on the need to salvage his so-called reputation with another dig at Pigsy’s size or his softness.

A rare thing, yeah, to look at him and see where he’s coming from.

It’s scary, having the weight of the world on your shoulders. Pigsy knows that well enough, and he’s pretty far down on that particular hierarchy; no-one really looks to him, except as the pack-mule pig god trailing around after the Monkey King and the legendary monk Tripitaka. And still he feels it some days, the weight of this quest that’s so much bigger than him.

He can’t imagine what it must feel like for Monkey, being the name on everyone’s tongue.

Oh, he talks himself up like a champion, preening and strutting, and all the rest crowing his triumphs to whatever crowd is willing to listen, but the crowds aren’t the one who have to share meals and campfires with him; they’re not the ones who have watched him struggle to tap into powers that won’t respond, powers that once came to him as naturally as breathing. They didn’t spend a year watching him cry to the heavens for a cloud that wouldn’t come.

Pigsy did. He saw the toll it took, whether or not Monkey would be willing to admit to it.

And that...

Well, maybe he is soft, after all, because he sure as hell softens now.

“Ah,” he says. “Right. Gotcha.”

“Yeah.” A pause, long enough for the self-consciousness to bleed away into something a little more typically Monkey. “I mean, don’t get me wrong: you _are_ soft.” He coughs. “But, uh...”

Despite himself, despite every instinct in his body telling him to glare or at least roll his eyes, Pigsy smiles.

“But you don’t want the rest of the world to see that maybe you are too?”

Monkey makes a derisive face. He throws himself back on the bedroll, yanks the turquoise blanket up over his head and mutters, in a voice muffled by wool, “Shut up and go to sleep.”

As if Pigsy can’t hear that he’s smiling too.

*

They don’t speak of it again.

They don’t need to, really. Pigsy has a better idea now, of where Monkey’s coming from when he dismisses and derides the others, when he uses them to build himself up. Not arrogance — at least not as much of it as he first thought — but fear. Fear of being seen to share the weakness he so despises in others, fear of being seen as no different from the useless, soft-bellied old gods that let his Master die and locked him away for all those centuries.

Fear too, possibly, of being less than the too-perfect god he’s spent his whole life being told he is.

Loved or hated, feared or revered, the Monkey King is — much to Pigsy’s irritation — a big deal.

He _is_ important.

That part, loathe as he is to admit it, is not hyperbole.

His name, his power, his reputation... they do matter.

If they’re going up against a world of demons, all of whom have it in for their merry little band, they sort of need to keep it that way. He needs to be intimidating, he needs to appear undefeatable, he needs to stay important.

Pigsy gets that.

He doesn’t appreciate the bad attitude that goes with it, but he does get it.

He _really_ doesn’t appreciate being the punchline for Monkey’s jokes, but...

Well.

Monkey’s never been the kind to stray from a path once he’s made the choice to walk it. Pigsy could yell and should, could barter or bargain or even beg, but those jokes aren’t going to stop, and that attitude isn’t going to go away. It’ll just have to be enough that he has a better view of the big picture: that those jokes and that bad attitude come not from a place of arrogance or cruelty but a place of insecurity.

Enough to be the only one, probably, who knows that the ‘great sage equal of Heaven’ is just as susceptible and soft to such things as anybody else.

Well, that and...

Other gestures.

He knows better than to expect Monkey will actually stop and assess his behaviour. He definitely knows better than to expect him to start being nice when he’s made it a whole subsection of his personality not to be.

None of those things happen, just as they all knew they wouldn’t.

But what does happen, subtle but pointed, is that Monkey starts packing away his own things in the morning.

Cheerfully, even.

On one such occasion, holding the turquoise blanket up to the light as he smooths out the creases with a careful, proud hand, he turns to Pigsy and says, quite seriously, “You’re right about one thing, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” Busy bundling up his own bedroll, Pigsy doesn’t bother to look up. “What’s that, then?”

“It _does_ bring out my eyes.”

And though he’d never admit it in a million years, Pigsy is sure he catches a note of thankfulness in that.

Not much of one, mind. Monkey’s far too arrogant for that.

But still, a little. A note, or maybe just half a note. A glimmer, sort of, like the way the turquoise really, really _doesn’t_ bring out his dark eyes. 

Or like the way his smile, as insufferable as ever on the surface, seems maybe a little gentler underneath.

A little _softer_ , one might say.

If one had a mind to, that is.

Pigsy doesn’t.

He tucks it away, folded and bundled up with other blankets and pillows and soft-bellied things, and hauls it up onto his shoulders, ready for the day’s trek.

**


	3. Chapter 3

**

“What,” Sandy says, looking and sounding hopelessly lost, “ _is_ that?”

It’s marginally less obnoxious coming from her than it was from Monkey, if only because Pigsy knows that her confusion is probably sincere. Even on her rare good days, talking to Sandy is like talking to an easily-befuddled chipmunk, so this particular stumbling block was not entirely unexpected.

Annoying, yes. It’s always annoying, having to explain simple things.

But at least from her it’s a well-meaning kind of annoying.

It’s a whole lot more than he can say for Monkey, and that turned out well enough, didn’t it?

It’s fine. He can deal with it.

“Bedroll,” he explains, with the slow patience he keeps in reserve for small children and... well, Sandy. “For sleeping on. Pillows, blankets. Also for sleeping on. You keeping up?”

“Yes.” She frowns at the thing for a full minute, then shyly bites her lip. “Um...”

“That’ll be a ‘no’, then.” He takes a deep, calming breath, then slowly counts to ten. Apparently his basic arithmetic is getting quite the workout these days. “Wet ground: bad. Comfy blankets: good. Okay?”

She opens her mouth as if to argue — again, no surprise, there; by her standards, ‘wet ground’ probably counts as living the dream — then swiftly shuts it again and nods until she gets dizzy.

“Okay,” she says, and that’s the end of that.

So he thinks anyway.

Except...

Well, except she’s _Sandy_.

And he really, really should know better.

*

Bedtime comes and goes, and hours after the others are asleep she’s still sitting there, legs crossed and brows knitted together, staring at the thing like it holds all the secrets to the universe.

And staring at him as well.

Wide eyes, confusion glimmering in their weird pale depths, flickers of almost-comprehension like the light from the dying campfire, flaring up briefly and then gone. She looks like a lost puppy, not the kind that’s trying to find its way home but the kind that never really learned what a home is. The kind that needs to be taken in before it gets itself hurt or killed or worse, but it doesn’t know how to ask and doesn’t even really know how it came to be outside in the first place.

And she’s supposed to be a blasted god.

And he’s supposed to be asleep already.

He sighs.

His knees crack as he stands, joints sore and tired after a long day of hard walking. He expects at least a cursory ‘thank you’ when he crouches in front of her, still creaking, but she only cocks her head to the side, blinks maybe half a dozen times, then goes back to staring at her untouched bedroll.

Pigsy grits his teeth. “Seriously?”

Sandy doesn’t answer.

Fair enough: he knew better than to expect that she would. She’s quiet enough even when she doesn’t have a reason to feel self-conscious as she does now.

Besides, it’s not like she makes any sense even when she does try to speak; probably for the best that she lets the situation, stupid as it is, tell its own story.

Still, it’s a thankless job.

He unrolls the thing, lays out the pieces all neat and tidy, talking her through the process step by step and bit by bit, so slow and careful that even a child-minded idiot could figure it out without too much trouble. The lighter blankets to cover the ground, the pillow for her head, and then the heavier blanket to cover her body: colourful, dark blues and warm reds, picked out especially to liven up her bleak, colourless world.

He holds it out, waits for her to take it and wrap it around herself.

Waits and waits and—

“Um,” she says.

He sighs again, louder this time, and hopefully more pointed. “Surely even _you_ know how to lie down.”

She looks at him, then the blanket, then she blinks at the pillow like she’s worried it’s going to bite her.

“I...” she starts, then shakes her head.

Pigsy bites down on a growl. It’s late, he’s tired, and he did not — he really, _really_ did not — sign up for this.

“Good _night_ , Sandy,” he says, and it’s a warning.

A good one, apparently. Either she catches the impatience in his tone, or else the sound of her name is some kind of trigger word or something, because she jolts back to herself like he’s just lit a fire under her.

He’s never seen anyone move so fast as she does then. She scrambles onto the assembled bedroll as quick as a blink, and yanks the blanket up over her head, quivering under it like she’s hiding from a monster.

Pigsy, having no idea what just happened, clears his throat.

Under the blanket, muffled, Sandy says, “You can go now.”

And that’s it.

No ‘thank you’. Not a whisper or a murmur of appreciation for all his time and effort.

Not a word of it. _You can go_ , like he was doing all this for his own blessed health.

At this point, he doesn’t know why he even bothered hoping for anything different.

*

Foolishly, he assumes she’ll be able to take it from there.

Just one more addition to the long, long list of things he’s foolishly assumed since joining the quest, only to be proven horribly and humiliatingly wrong.

It seemed a safe enough bet, though, this one: Sandy might be scattered, but it’s not like laying out a bedroll is some grand work of bloody genius, is it?

Apparently, for her, it is.

The following night brings another round of the same game. He unpacks Sandy’s bedroll along with the rest of their things, tosses it at her head, and watches with a sinking sense of despair as she just sits there and stares at it, just as dazed and confused as she was last night.

Pigsy waits, hoping against hope that she’ll figure it out on her own.

Waits, feeling his hopes sink as the sun does, as he cooks and they eat the evening meal, as he and Tripitaka wash and pack away the cookware, as Monkey patrols the surrounding area to make sure it’s safe. The same routine as every night, over and over again, and really, he should know better by now.

He really, really should.

And here they are again: the others both fast asleep on opposite sides of the fire, Monkey snoring on his and Tripitaka soundless on hers, and Sandy is looking up at Pigsy with those silent, hopeful puppy eyes, like her whole world hangs on him showing her how to lay out a bloody bed.

He buries his face in his hands and moans, “Seriously?”

He can _feel_ her staring. “I suppose that depends on your definition. I mean, seriousness is really just a matter of perspective, if you—”

“Enough!” He doesn’t like to raise his voice to her, but sometimes it’s the only way to get her to understand. “It’s late. I’m tired. Just unroll the thing and go to sleep, will you?”

She doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t hear her moving either, and when he finally summons the courage to lift his head he’s not surprised at all to find her still sitting there staring.

And smiling.

Hopeful, exuberant, sort of childlike, the way she gets sometimes when she’s learning something new.

Pigsy reminds himself to be patient with her, reminds himself that she’s not being like this on purpose.

At least, she’d bloody well better not be.

“Um,” she says, in a voice that matches her smile. “Could you...?”

Pigsy scowls. “Pretty sure you could do it by yourself if you tried.”

“Oh,” she says, very quietly.

And then her face starts to crumple, like she’s about to burst into tears, and Pigsy cannot — seriously, _cannot_ — deal with this right now. He just can’t.

“All right, fine,” he sighs, throwing up his hands and abandoning all hope of ever getting to sleep again. “I’ll take you through it one more time. But only _once_ , and then you’re on your own. Do you understand?”

She beams. “Of course!”

This time, he knows better than to believe it.

*

Two days later, he’s at the end of his rope.

He waits until Sandy’s disappeared for her morning bath, then throws up his hands and blurts out, “Do you suppose she was dropped on her head as a child?”

Monkey snickers. “Right. ‘As a child’.”

Tripitaka silences them both with a hard look. “Don’t be unkind,” she chides, in a tone that leaves no room for discussion. Then, with barely a fraction more patience, “What’s the problem, Pigsy?”

So he explains. Slowly and carefully, using very small words, because if there’s one thing he’s really gotten good at these last couple of nights, it’s explaining things slowly, carefully, and using very small words.

“I mean, it’s not exactly difficult, is it?” he gripes, when he’s done. “How bloody damaged do you have to be, for pity’s sake, to not be able to figure out how to unroll a bloody bed?”

Monkey snickers again, ignoring Tripitaka’s warning glare. “You spent an hour yesterday trying to explain why she couldn’t drink water out of a sieve.”

That... was a thing that happened, yeah. Pigsy grimaces, flooded by unwanted memories, and finds his teeth clenching again of their own accord.

“Okay,” he says, once he’s cleansed his mind of it. “But she got there in the end. I mean, yeah, it took us an hour, but she _did_ figure it out. This stuff...” He shakes his head. “I’m starting to wonder if it’ll be a century before she’s wrapped her mind around the concept of putting her head on a pillow.”

Tripitaka, ever the cock-eyed optimist when it comes to Sandy and her lack of wits, makes a thoughtful noise.

“Are you sure she hasn’t?” she asks in a low voice. “Figured it out, I mean.”

“Eh?” Pigsy blinks at her, genuinely baffled by the question. “Of course I’m sure. Why else would she ask?”

“It’s Sandy,” Monkey mutters, rolling his eyes. “Why does she do anything?”

Tripitaka thins her lips, but she refrains from chastening him again; no doubt she realises there would be no point. Monkey is nothing if not single-minded when insulting other people.

“Look,” she says instead, to Pigsy. “We all know that Sandy can be a little...”

“Slow?” he suggests, as charitable as he can manage given the circumstances.

Tripitaka doesn’t glare this time. She sighs, she rolls her eyes, she bites her tongue, but she doesn’t glare. “We all know it can take her a while sometimes to grasp things,” she says after a beat. “But it’s not like she’s never used a pillow or a blanket before.”

That’s a decent point, actually. Pigsy mulls it over, then concedes with a grunt. “True enough.”

“Right.” She’s speaking very slowly now, like he does when he’s dealing with Sandy. Pigsy is starting to feel a little bit like he’s the idiot here after all, failing to wrap his head around something that’s apparently so obvious. “So maybe there’s something else going on.”

It’s not something he’d considered.

It’s definitely not something he’s bothered to ask her about.

Didn’t bother talking to her at all, really.

All of a sudden, he feels less like an idiot and more like an ass.

*

So, being the sort of god who learns from his mistakes, he asks.

He sets the bedroll down in front of her, still bundled, then sits himself down too, with the thing poised between them. He watches her frown at it, then at him, and he says, without waiting for the inevitable puppy eyes, “Talk to me.”

Sandy sits up a little straighter. “About anything in particular? I have a few things I’ve been mulling over for a while, if you’re interested...”

“No.” Taking a deep breath he wills himself to show patience. He points at the bedroll, then at her face, then he says, slow and careful, “I want you to talk to me about _this_. Specifically, I want you to tell me what the problem is.”

Sandy blinks. At him, at the bedroll, then down at herself.

“Um,” she says.

Pigsy doesn’t pinch the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t try to stave off the gathering headache, because he doesn’t want her to see that she’s causing it. He might be an impatient, insensitive ass with her sometimes, but he doesn’t want her to think she’s making his life as difficult as she is. Not until he knows for certain if she’s doing it on purpose.

“Right,” he says, forcing his jaw not to clench. “Don’t suppose you could be a tad more specific?”

“Not really,” she mumbles after a long, self-conscious beat. “I didn’t know there was a problem.”

“Of course you didn’t.” He leans in just a little, rests his palm flat on the bedroll, tries to keep his voice even and not sound as tired and annoyed as he is. “Look. We all have stuff we struggle with. And I know some of the stuff you struggle with is... not the sort of stuff anyone else would struggle with. I get that.”

“Um.” She’s blinking again, like a confused owl. “Is this the part where I say ‘thank you’?”

He’s tempted to laugh at that, bitterly. But he’s not about to take hollow gratitude from someone who doesn’t even understand what they should be grateful for, so he just shakes his head.

“No,” he says patiently. “I’m just trying to explain that I know you have a hard time getting your head around things sometimes. And that’s okay, really. But _this_... Sandy, even by your standards this is...” He bites down before he can say ‘ridiculous’. “...a lot. It’s a lot. So maybe if you could... I don’t know, show me where you’re having trouble with it, I could...”

He stops. She’s staring at him like he’s just asked her to pluck the stars out of the sky with her bare hands.

“I’m not having trouble,” she says, looking about as baffled as he’s starting to feel. “It’s a bedroll.”

And she shuffles back, like that was all that needed to be said, and waits again for him to unroll it for her.

Pigsy stares at her, then at the untouched bedroll.

“So...” He swallows down his temper, wills his voice to stay sweet. “Just to be... just to be really clear, here... you _are_ capable of doing this yourself?”

She stares back, like he’s the one not making any sense. “Of course.”

He takes a deep breath, lets it out very slowly. Then, unable to hold himself in check for another second, he blurts out, “Then why in the seven bloody hells do you need me to do it for you?”

“I don’t need you to.” She’s smiling again, all moon-bright and starry-eyed, and her real, genuine simplicity is making it really, really difficult for him to stay annoyed with her. “I _want_ you to.”

Pigsy waits for that to sink in.

It doesn’t.

“You...” He counts to ten, for what feels like the ten thousandth time that week. “Are you serious?”

She nods, then nudges the thing towards him again, blinking up at him with those stupid puppy eyes.

“You’re better at it than I am,” she explains, beaming even more brightly as he surrenders at last and starts to shake out the blankets for her. “And besides, it’s... that is, I...”

And she stops, flushing darker than he’s ever seen her.

Pigsy stops too, holding the blanket in the space between them, not like an offering but like a shroud, a sort of shelter for one or both of them to hide behind. She needs that sort of thing often, and if the strange, self-conscious look on her face is anything to go by Pigsy has a feeling he’ll need its protection a little himself too, before this conversation is over.

“Clearly,” he says, “there’s something I’m missing here.”

Sandy ducks her head. Her hands are twitching, like she’s giving serious thought to snatching the blankets out of his hands and finishing the task herself, rather than open herself up to whatever madness is running around inside her head right now.

Pigsy, quite frankly, would not mind at all if she did just that.

But a part of him is sort of morbidly curious now as well — her wayward way of thinking is frustrating, true, but it’s kind of fascinating as well and he’s intrigued in spite of himself — and so he holds them just out of her reach.

Sandy makes a small, waifish sort of sound, then swallows hard.

“It’s just nice,” she mumbles, keeping her face well hidden. “You making my bed for me. Just nice, that’s all. No-one’s done anything like that for me in many years, and I...” She shakes her head; from what little he can make out of her face, she’s vividly uncomfortable. “Many, many years. I’d forgotten how it feels, you know? A warm bed someone else made for me. Their ‘goodnight’ echoing inside my head, like a lullaby or a... or a bedtime story.”

Pigsy swallows too, thick and suddenly parched. “A bedtime story.”

Sandy winces. “I know that’s not what this is. I know it’s just you explaining something very simple and then getting annoyed because you think I don’t understand. But it feels like... like that.” Another convulsion in her throat, and in his. “Like it’s safe to go to sleep. Do you know how long it’s been, Pigsy, since it was safe for me to go to sleep? Under a warm blanket, with a pillow, to the sound of someone else talking to me? Do you have any idea...”

She stops, shaking her head again, flushing hot as a furnace, and she looks so—

She looks so _ashamed_. Small and vulnerable and achingly fragile, ashamed of herself for wanting something so simple as a bedtime story and someone to make up a bed for her.

Pigsy feels that way as well: the shame part, at least. Really, deeply, viscerally, he feels so, so ashamed of himself.

He never even thought.

They forget sometimes, him and Monkey, how vast the distance is between them and her. Even not counting that they were raised among their own kind and she was not, he and Monkey have three millenia of life between them. Centuries upon centuries they’ve flown through, the two of them, dozens of little human lifetimes played out in the blink of an eye; meanwhile Sandy has barely even crawled her way out of her first.

Ten times their experience, this world has put her through, and that in less than a tenth of either one of their lives.

And how much younger was she then, the last time she had a home, the last time she had a family or friends or—

Or any kind of normal.

Any kind of life at all.

Small wonder she talks and thinks and acts the way she does. Small wonder she’s so easily confused and disoriented. Small wonder she looks up at him sometimes like a lost puppy; it’s not much less than what she is.

Empathy isn’t his strong point. He really should work on that.

For now, he hears himself say, low but very serious, “If you wanted a bedtime story, you should’ve just said so.”

Behind the wild curtain of her hair, Sandy frowns up at him.

“That would be ridiculous.” She’s still mumbling, and still flushing as well; Pigsy gets the feeling his rough voice and hard eyes aren’t really helping with the embarrassment thing. “I’m not a...”

There’s a lot of ways she could end that sentence, probably, but she chooses not to end it at all. Leaves it to his imagination, maybe, in hopes that he’ll be generous to her with his interpretation.

He tries, at least.

“Maybe not any more,” he says, leaving the word unspoken. “But not so long ago, yeah?”

Sandy sighs. The water in her eyes transforms her whole face; she looks devastatingly young, a babe-in-arms next to either one of her fellow gods, but at the same time she looks so old it makes him ache, ravaged by the life she lived after losing what little childhood she once had.

Not so long ago, indeed. But a lifetime as well, and such a brutal one.

Sullen and very small, Sandy mumbles, “I don’t need a bedtime story.”

Pigsy lets that sit for a minute or two. Waits, with as much nurturing patience as he has in him, until she lifts her head and looks at him fully. Waits until the flush has faded from her face, leaving behind her usual sunless pallour, the usual dizzied confusion, the blithe, half-empty look in her eyes. Sandy, the god he knows, carrying only pieces of the littler one she used to be.

He holds up the blanket, like that’s the only reason he’s still here.

“I know you don’t need one,” he smiles. “But if you _want_ one...”

Sandy looks down at the blanket, and then up at his face.

Pigsy takes the moment of her hesitation as a cue to drape the blanket over her slim, shivering body, tucking it around her shoulders and gently encourage her to lie down. Head on the pillow, wrapped up in the colourful blue-on-red blanket, she looks up at him like the too-young-too-old creature her life made out of her: a child’s heart trembling in her eyes, the hardened lines of age and experience drawing her mouth too tight, stiffening her spine so much that she can’t relax.

“Do you even know any stories?” she asks quietly.

Pigsy snorts. “Oh, you know. One or two, maybe?”

A dozen human lifetimes’ worth, he means. Likely a dozen of her lifetimes too.

Enough to keep her sleeping safely through the rest of the quest and then some.

She studies him for a long, long while, then slowly nods.

“You should let them out, then,” she tells him, with great seriousness. “Stories aren’t supposed to be kept inside, you know.”

Well. She has a point there, doesn’t she?

Leaning back on his haunches, Pigsy waits while she makes herself more comfortable, snuggling down in the blanket like a burrowing animal making itself a nest. He waits, watching as she arranges the other blankets beneath her, the pillow under her head, all the little bits and pieces of the bedroll, and he wonders how in the world he could have been so blind as to assume she didn’t understand.

It’s readily apparent now that the one who didn’t was him.

“You ready?” he asks, when she’s done wriggling around.

Sandy doesn’t say anything, but the heaviness of her head speaks for itself, as clear as a bell. She’s already drowsy, he can see, and getting more so by the second. If they even make it through the ‘once upon a time’ part of the story before she’s out, it’ll be a bloody miracle.

Still, never one to be deterred by the purposelessness of a task, he settles in, makes himself comfortable, and begins.

And he thinks, as she blinks up at him and listens, that her sleepy, lopsided smile is all the thanks he needs.

**


	4. Chapter 4

**

“ _What_ —” Tripitaka starts, but that’s as far as she gets.

“Bedroll,” Pigsy sighs, with the world-weary boredom of one who has explained this far too many times already. “Pillow. Blanket. Good for sleeping on, keeps out the cold. Any other questions?”

“I can think of a couple.”

Yeah, of course she can.

Honestly, it can be a bit of a drag sometimes. Pigsy adores their little human, he really does, but she has a habit of never letting anything sit by unchallenged that often drives him to distraction.

He’ a lot more like Monkey than he’d care to admit in that respect: they’re both ‘act first, think later’ kinds of gods — well, ‘think never’ in Monkey’s case, but still — and Tripitaka’s tendency to question absolutely everything has been known on occasion to weigh on both their patience.

Now too, so it seems.

“It’s really not that complicated,” Pigsy tells her wearily. “We’ve been on the road for who knows how long without blankets or pillows or anything. Our sleeping situation is well past due for an upgrade, you know?”

She’s still not convinced. Somehow, he doubted she would be.

“I don’t know, Pigsy.” She at least has the decency to look conflicted about it, rather than just dismissing the thing outright; that’s something, he supposes. “It seems awfully frivolous. We’re on a holy mission, remember, and—”

“Right. And waking up with a bad back every bloody morning is an important part of this mission?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just...”

She doesn’t finish the thought, but the sigh that follows — deep and troubled and much more tired than she should be at this time of the day — does the job well enough for her.

Pigsy might not be the deepest thinker of their little group, but he’s not stupid. He can read between the lines once in a while. He knows what that sigh means, coming from her.

“Feeling guilty?” he asks.

She considers this for a while, gnawing on the inside of her cheek, weighing up her answers before she lets them out into the world. She’s good at that, thinking things through; better than Monkey, who leaps straight into action without bothering to give the others a heads-up, or Sandy, who blurts out whatever weird mindlessness springs into her head no matter how inappropriate or senseless. Tripitaka thinks about everything, even the minutest minutiae, and so when she speaks Pigsy makes a point of paying attention.

He pays attention now, and when she speaks it holds weight.

“Yeah,” she agrees at last. “I mean, you’ve seen some of the places we’ve passed through on this quest. You’ve seen what the demons have done to the people out there. Humans, just like me, helpless and frightened, only they don’t have three big strong gods to protect them.”

“Well, they _kind of_ do…” He tries to smile, but he can tell it’s not really working. “I mean, isn’t that what the whole quest thing is about?”

She shakes her head. “You know what I mean. It doesn’t feel right, sleeping all night on gold-fringed pillows, safe and warm and comfortable, while the people we’re questing to protect have to sleep on broken floors in constant fear of attack or worse.”

It’s typically Tripitaka, and while Pigsy can’t help feeling a bit affronted at the dismissal — he worked twice as hard on the monk’s bedroll than the others’, scouring high and low for a mattress and blanket to match her robes, and a pillow to match her status — he’s not quite the soft-bellied sybarite Monkey thinks he is; he sees her point, he really does.

What she doesn’t see is that, in his soft-bellied, sybaritic way, he’s helping with that.

Really, he is.

“I get it,” he says, low enough that he really hopes Monkey won’t overhear. “But if we stop to help out every lost urchin who crosses our path we’re never going to get anywhere. Even the holiest among us has to pick and choose sometimes, and even your Scholar had to feed himself before his flock. You know?” He can tell she doesn’t, but he presses on anyway, hoping against hope that she will. “We have to look after ourselves first, or there’ll be nothing left for when it counts.”

Despite his best efforts, it seems he doesn’t lower his voice enough: on the other side of their campfire, Monkey snickers and says, “Speak for yourself.”

Tripitaka raises a hand, as if to chide him for that, then thinks better of it and just shakes her head. “Why bother?” she says, conspiratorially, to Pigsy.

Pigsy snorts his agreement. “We all know he’s full of hot air,” he says, then refocuses on the conversation at hand. “Forget him: you know it’s a decent point.”

Tripitaka sighs again, heavier now because she does know.

Doesn’t have to like it, but yeah: “A _half_ -decent point,” she says, and Pigsy thinks that’s close enough.

As much as he can hope for, anyway, knowing her as he does.

They’ve been travelling together long enough by now; he knows her insides nearly as well as his own. It doesn’t much matter, at the end of the day, that she spent half that time pretending to be someone else; the girl could flatten her chest and deepen her voice all she liked, but there was no covering up the rich, beating heart beneath. Tripitaka is a monk through and through, whatever else she might not be, and her heart is as generous as it is big.

Pigsy knows this. He wouldn’t be here he didn’t; she wouldn’t have given him a shot in the first place.

It’s part of why he worked so hard on her bedroll, finding the perfect colours, the perfect fabric, the perfect everything to reflect the name and the heart within. A small part, to be sure, vastly overshadowed by the more important parts, but a part nonetheless: he owes her. For the life she freed him from, the life he got back, the life that has finally found its meaning. It’s all her doing, the god he’s becoming, and no amount of gold fringe in the world can pay that back.

It’s all he has, though. And it’s the only language he was ever taught. Glittering, glistering, glimmering gifts: the only kind of affection he’s ever known.

But it’s not the only reason. The other...

The other, he knows, she would never admit in a million years:

That she, not Monkey, is their strongest link.

That her name, not his, is the one people whisper, the one they hold close to their heart and let sit on their tongues, rich with the tang of hope. That she’s the one they look to — humans and gods alike — to show them a better way, a better life, a better world.

Tripitaka deserves the best because she _is_ the best.

And the gold fringe might look frivolous to her — of course it would; after all, she can’t see the gold halo she’s already wearing — but to the people who look to her for hope and for purpose, it’s a symbol of something a whole lot richer than its colour: of _her_ , the radiant, gleaming pure-hearted hero who’s going to remake the world into something better.

Monkey can whine all he wants about his turquoise blanket. Sandy can spout whatever weird poetic nonsense she likes about the clashing blues and reds of hers. But Tripitaka, edged with gold and dyed in perfect blue?

That bloody matters.

He just doesn’t know how to make her see it.

*

In many ways, Tripitaka is one of the keenest, shrewdest people he’s ever met.

Not just humans, even: gods, too, and demons.

She’s clever, quick-witted, blessed with the best education the Scholar had to give and the inner wisdom to use his lessons well. She’s an asset, not just because of the robes she wears or the name that comes with them, but because of the intelligence and clarity she carries inside herself; in short, the girl is brilliant.

In some ways, at least.

In others, she’s so oblivious she makes Sandy look like a right bloody genius.

She has no idea, truly and sincerely, just how much a word from her is worth.

A dozen gold-edged bedrolls, or a hundred, or a thousand.

She sees the obvious stuff, of course. The stuff no-one could miss, unless they were a soulless self-serving demon. The poor, the destitute, the helpless and hungry and hopeless. The fear and the grief, the blanket of pain that seems to cover everything, tattered and shredded by demon claws.

She sees the loss, the lack, the loneliness. She sees the holes in their clothes, hears the growling in their bellies, smells the taint of their fear; she sees their suffering, and she feels it.

But she doesn’t see the other part, and she won’t let herself feel it either.

The way they light up, even the very worst of them, when she stops to offer what little comfort she can. The way they fumble in their pockets for a trinket, a keepsake, even a few coins, whatever small tokens they have that they think might help. The way it lights them up too, in a humble, hopeful human way, to imagine that they, by giving what little they have, might have aided Tripitaka in her quest.

She doesn’t see how much it means to them, to feel connected to a mission they can only watch from afar, armed only with prayers that it will find some success.

Monkey sees it, of course, but in his never-tiring arrogance he assumes it’s meant for him.

Sandy doesn’t see anything. She sees only the people, faceless and frightening, and hides.

Pigsy, being neither enamoured by himself nor terrified of other people, sees the attention for what it is: an outpouring of love and faith for the small human with the big heart.

They would give the clothes off their backs if they thought she could make use of the fabric.

Pigsy knows what Tripitaka would have to say about that, if only she’d glance up and see it.

She doesn’t, though.

She looks down, instead, and she sees the bedroll that he bought for her, beautiful and gilded and symbolic, and she begs him to give it to someone more deserving, someone colder or hungrier or more desperate. She begs him to turn the thing into an act of charity, not realising that anyone who took it would just give it back the next day, as a tribute to the great monk and her greater quest.

He doesn’t know how to explain it, though, to someone who will never understand their own worth.

So he just says, with what little tact he can muster, “It’ll serve us better than them; trust me on that.”

She doesn’t.

She hates the thing. She sees it as a symbol of everything it’s not, everything _he_ once was.

And Pigsy hates himself a little bit too, because he doesn’t know how to explain that she’s wrong about them both; he’s so unaccustomed to keeping company with good people, so unused to seeing himself as one too, he’s still not entirely sure he knows how the whole ‘goodness’ thing works.

Where would he have learned it, anyway?

Five hundred years, he kept company with demons, in all their self-worship, their oversized egos, their gluttony. It’s why he’s so good at deflating Monkey in the moments when his ego or his self-worship swells too big; his whole life he’s surrounded himself with bigger personalities than his own, shrinking his spirit to smallness where he could never shrink his body. He knows how to deal with arrogance, with self-importance, with _Monkey_ , but he has no idea how to explain to Tripitaka that her goodness shines brighter than the ‘great sage equal of Heaven’ can ever imagine.

So he sits, watching as she lays out the monk-blue mattress and gold-fringed pillow next to Monkey and Sandy’s colourful, modest blankets, and he bites his tongue when Monkey complains that _he_ should be the one with the best bedroll, and he clenches his jaw when Tripitaka’s skin colours with heat because she really believes he’s right.

“You should take it,” she says flatly. “I don’t want it.”

Pigsy sighs. “I worked my fingers to the bone for that thing,” he laments, because it’s a simpler truth, and one he does know how to put into words. “You’d really make me sit here and watch while you hand it over to Mr. Ingratitude over there?”

“You won’t let me give it to anyone else,” she points out. “What else am I supposed to do with it?”

“Unless I’m mistaken,” Sandy volunteers, speaking very slowly, “you’re supposed to sleep on it.”

And she looks to Pigsy, all wide-eyed and hopeful, as if to check that she’s got the correct answer.

“Right.” He tunes out her exuberant, self-congratulatory giggle, and focuses on Tripitaka. “Look. I get the whole ‘modesty’ thing. Really, I do. But sometimes it pays to have something a little flashier, you know?”

Her expression makes it quite clear that she doesn’t.

“I know you’re used to having the finer things in life,” she says, with none of her usual patience. “But we’re not living in gilded palaces any more, Pigsy. We’re on a quest for the good of the whole world. Sometimes we have to sacrifice things like comfort and luxury. Do you understand that?”

Pigsy wills his temper to stay down. “Already got that memo on that, yeah,” he bites out. “Hard as it is to believe, that’s not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about? Because I’m at a loss as to how _this_ —” She waves at the bedroll, angry frustration boiling over, as he wishes his could too. “—benefits anyone except us.”

Seated between them, Monkey clears his throat. On the other side of the fire, Sandy squirms uncomfortably.

Pigsy can’t say be blames either of them if they’re a little unsettled by this.

It’s a rare thing, disagreement and dissonance between him and Tripitaka. They’ve both been known to lose their tempers with Monkey, of course, and they all lose their patience with Sandy from time to time, but Tripitaka usually gives Pigsy a little more credit than this.

And okay, so maybe he usually expresses himself a little better too.

The clash is an uncomfortable thing, seemingly as much for the others as for themselves, and Pigsy finds himself momentarily caught between a rock and a hard place: his rising frustration, the need to make Tripitaka understand that this isn’t just about decadence or luxury, and not wanting to make things too unpleasant for the others.

Heaven knows, he understands the awkwardness of watching two of his friends duke it out over something stupid and meaningless.

Not that this is that.

Tripitaka thinks it is, though, and that’s exactly the problem.

Pigsy hasn’t done a good job of making her see why it’s not.

She’s not doing a good job, either, of trusting that he maybe knows a thing or two about things like this. Decadence, yes, and luxury and all the rest of it, but specifically the kind of power that those things can carry.

He’s not just the lazy good-for-nothing who slept on feather beds in a demon’s gilded palace.

He’s walked among the people too. The real people, human and helpless and hungry, looking up to the heavens for a beacon of hope, however dim, just to have something to pray to. He knows what fancy things mean to people like that, and while, yeah, sometimes it’s a greedy, lustful demon who takes what doesn’t belong to her, other times it’s something else.

Like status. Like a symbol. Like—

Like a holy monk on a holy mission, well-equipped and well taken care of, a pilgrim who doesn’t need to beg her meals from the mouths of those already starved.

It means they have _enough_.

It means they don’t need offerings from those who can’t afford to give them.

He wants to explain that.

He really, really wants to.

But he is frustrated, with her for not seeing, and frustrated with himself for not being able to express it, and when he opens his mouth to speak again, all that comes out is a sullen growl.

“If that’s how you feel about it...” he mutters.

Tripitaka folds her arms across her chest, pointed and just as stubborn as any one of her gods.

“It is,” she says flatly.

“Fine,” Pigsy snaps, throwing up his hands. “Do what you want with it, then. See if I care.”

“I _will_.”

“Fine.”

“ _Fine_.” Her glare could shame the whole blasted ocean into crawling back where it came from, he’s sure. “First thing in the morning, we find someone more deserving and give the stupid thing away. Is that clear?”

Pigsy bites down on the inside of his cheek.

“Perfectly,” he says.

*

The morning, however, has other plans.

So too does the poor, unsuspecting soul that Tripitaka chooses to be the recipient of her little gift.

They pass her on the road midway through the morning: a hunched old woman with nothing to her name but the patched and tattered rags she wears. An exile or a vagrant, no doubt, cast out or fleeing from some demon-infested village; there are a thousand stories behind her aged, exhausted eyes, a thousand experiences, and even Pigsy feels a pang of sympathy at the sight of her.

She sees them before they see her, mistaking them for simple travellers or traders for less than a moment. A moment, mouth half-open to beg some food or water, but then her eyes fall on Monkey’s crown and Tripitaka’s robes and the lines on her face melt away into something new.

 _Hope_ , of the kind that someone like her probably wouldn’t have felt in a very, very long time.

“It’s you,” she whispers, all her tiredness melting away into reverence and joy. “You’re the—”

“The Monkey King!” And there he is, right on cue, swaggering and strutting and flexing, wholly oblivious to where the woman’s eyes really rest. “Indeed I am!”

Tripitaka, seeing none of the nuance, recognises only the kind of lost cause she’s been searching for: a fitting recipient of a gilded bedroll. It’s all she cares to see, and all she cares to think about, and it’s frankly almost laughable, the way she puts on her most charitable monk’s smile and says—

“Please, let us help you.”

As if she hasn’t already, just by being there.

She’ll never get it, Pigsy thinks. Maybe that’s what makes her so worthy in the first place: that she does not, will not, cannot see exactly how much power she holds just by being herself.

The woman’s shock is no surprise to Pigsy, though it clearly startles the others. She lurches backwards, wide-eyed and dumbstruck, looking for all the world as if the heavens have parted and bathed her in holy radiance.

“You?” she breathes. “Help me?”

“Of course.” Tripitaka takes a step towards her, the bedroll ready in her arms. “Here, if you’d accept—”

“No, no!” And she retreats again, as though afraid she’ll sully the little monk somehow if she dares to touch her. “Please. Your mission is a holy one, and I’m only a...” A pause, equally weighted with despair and hope; the latter is new and rare enough that, for now, it overpowers the former. “I ought to be the one helping you. Please, I beg of you, let me...”

She’d do it, too. Tear the clothes right off her back, and do it happily.

She’s already reaching into her cloaks and hole-ridden pockets, searching before any of them can stop her for some token, some gesture she can make. It’s nothing they haven’t seen before, and Pigsy knows what comes next, knows that there’s only one way to stop this.

He’s the only one who sees it, apparently. Sandy is blinking uselessly down at her boots, as she always does when they have company of any kind, and Tripitaka — being in one of her oblivious moments — is looking up at Monkey.

As if that buffoon would ever turn down an offering, earned or not.

Still, there she is, silently imploring him to say something, do something, to be more noble, while he flexes and preens and does nothing at all. Both of them, as always, are completely and utterly oblivious to the fact that the poor woman’s eyes are not on the god at all but on the tiny human by his side.

Clueless bloody idiots, the lot of of them.

Pigsy’s not usually one to take matters into his own hands in moments like this. Truth be told, he’s more like Monkey than anyone else: he likes getting free stuff, even from people who’d be better served keeping their offerings for themselves. He’s never claimed to be anything more holy or righteous than the gluttonous, self-serving god he is, and he has no plans for that to change.

Except for this time, apparently.

Heaven help his soft little heart.

He steps between them, as deft as he can while still carrying their stuff on his back, and plucks the beautiful, lovingly-bought bedroll out of Tripitaka’s arms.

A symbol, yeah, and an important one. Maybe she’ll see that now.

“No need for any of that, now,” he says to the woman, ignoring Tripitaka’s exasperated squeaks. “We’re pretty well-stocked already. See for yourself.”

And he holds out the bedroll in all its blue-dyed, gild-edged glory.

The richness of the thing is undeniable; it draws the woman’s attention away from her own meagre supplies, and — rather more critically — from Tripitaka’s face. She leans in to examine it, taking in the delicate stitchwork, the colours, the edging of the pillow, admiring it with the slack-jawed reverence of one who has already decided that she is in the company of holiness.

“Of course,” she says in a prayerful whisper. A moment, then another, and then, with a surrendering sort of sigh, she finally withdraws her hands from her cloaks. “Nothing I have could ever compare to such beauty.”

Pigsy cuts a glance at Tripitaka. She’s studying him closely now, guarded but curious, and he supposes it’s as much of an invitation to continue as he can hope for, that she hasn’t shoved him away or shouted him down.

He looks to the woman, smiles and says, “Like I said, we’re well stocked already. As you can see.”

And then...

Then, the important part.

She’s stammering apologies, as if there’s any call for that sort of thing, as if there ever would, and Tripitaka steps in to try and placate her, not understanding that it’s not _charity_ the woman needs but—

Well.

Pigsy shifts the pack on his shoulders, careful to make it appear a whole lot heavier than it is. He sets down the bedroll, sets down the pack, and begins slowly, pointedly rummaging through their things.

“Plenty enough to spare a few bites for a fellow traveller,” he remarks, eyes on nothing but the task. “What do you say?”

Eyes down, he’d swear he _hears_ Tripitaka begin to understand.

The woman, still deferring to the monk, stammers some more.

“Um...” She clears her throat. “If the great sage...”

“The great sage agrees,” Monkey says importantly.

Pigsy, with his head halfway buried in their meagre supplies, decides not to correct him.

*

That night Tripitaka doesn’t hesitate: she shakes out the bedroll, lays it out with the others, and sits herself down like the thing was made for her.

Which, as a matter of fact, it was.

But she doesn’t need to know that.

“That’s what you meant,” she says to Pigsy, tracing the pillow’s golden edges with a thoughtful finger. “Last night, when you said it pays to have something flashy.”

Pigsy, busying himself the evening meal, hums quietly to himself.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he says evenly, “but there’s a lot of folks out there who’d give the clothes off their back if they thought it might help the ‘great sage’.” A moment’s pause as they both glance at Monkey. “And I don’t mean _him_.”

Tripitaka gives that some thought, chewing on her lip and looking so conflicted that Pigsy wonders if maybe she’s not quite as oblivious as he’s been assuming.

“Yeah,” she says at last, barely above a whisper. “I’ve noticed.”

Pigsy lets that simmer for a bit, bubbling away like the soup he’s got hanging over the fire. He watches out of the corner of his eye as she makes herself comfortable on the bedroll, legs crossed and spine stiff, the perfect vision of a monk in meditation.

It seems a shame to interrupt, but he knows she’s waiting for him to continue, so he does.

“Show them a bit of flashiness,” he goes on, when the moment and the soup have both reached their boiling points. “A bit of luxury, a bit of status.” That’s the important part, _status_ , but he knows better than to make her blush by saying so. “Make them see that we’ve got all we need, that we don’t need any help.”

Make them more amenable, too, to maybe accepting a spot of help in return.

That part, he doesn’t say. Going by the look on her face, he doesn’t need to.

She’s quiet for a while, taking that in, gazing down at the bedroll, the fancy mattress — a proper one for her, so much nicer than the others’ — the rich blues of the matching blanket, the pillow with its golden edging, the way the whole ensemble matches her robes so beautifully. She must see now, how much work he put into getting the thing for her, and, cock-eyed optimist that he is, he thinks she probably understands a bit better now, exactly why.

For her, yeah, because she deserves it. But for them, too, the lost and desperate ones, the ones that have nothing of their own, only the hope that comes from whispering her name in prayer.

Finally, quietly, she says, “You think it makes a statement. About us.”

 _About you_ , Pigsy thinks, but keeps that, with the rest of it, to himself.

He nods, turns his gaze back to the bubbling soup, and says, “I think people are going to be a lot more willing to accept our help if they think we have more to spare than we do.”

He can feel her eyes on him, piercing and keen. _There’s that shrewd little monk_ , he thinks, and hides his smile behind the cooking pot.

“You’re better at this than you pretend to be,” she murmurs at last, softly.

Pigsy shrugs. “Live long enough, you learn a thing or two about people.”

“I guess you do.” She leans back a little, stretching herself out on the bedroll. Comfortable and content, though he doubts she’ll ever admit it. “I should apologise. You know, for last night. Assuming you were just being...”

“Myself?” He waves it off. “Forget it. We both know why you thought what you did.”

“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have.” She’s very serious now, and that makes him a tad nervous. “You look out for us, Pigsy, and we take that for granted too often. I shouldn’t have been so quick to assume your motivations were decadent just because you’ve lived in decadence before. I shouldn’t have—”

“Like I said,” he interrupts, perhaps a touch too quickly, “forget about it.” He waves a hand at the bedroll, taking in her repose. “Use the thing well. Wear it out. Make it so I get my money’s worth, and we’ll call it even. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“There we go, then,” he says, and returns to his labours like that’s all that needs to be said.

And maybe it is, at that.

Tripitaka, watching him work, lies all the way back, pressing her small human shape into the mattress, like she’s making a point of claiming the thing. Accepting it for the gift it always was, and maybe accepting a bit of his wisdom as well.

And then, just as he’s starting to think he might be able to shut the page on the whole blasted affair, she sits up, catches his eye, and says, like it’s the most important thing in the world:

“Thank you, Pigsy.”

Just like that: a real, honest-to-whatever ‘thank you’.

Out loud, even.

More years than that that tiny, powerful human will see in her whole lifetime: that’s how long it’s been since he got a proper out-loud ‘thank you’.

It’s exactly the body-blow he thought it would be, hearing it said at long last, and when the shock and disbelief ebb away, the soft, gooey feeling that lingers in his chest is a kind of home he hasn’t seen in centuries.

It settles across his shoulders like a blanket, cozy and colourful, and keeps him warm.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, smiling like the soft, sentimental fool he is. “You’re welcome.”

***


End file.
